Kerstin's extras

27/02/2015

I have been pondering possible changes, to make it into a clothing quality. Could I use a thicker yarn, or two ends per heddle (would perhaps give a little more flexibility/"drape")? Or could I just sley denser? But would the binding (structure) work at the extremely high sett?

The closest parts have some 12 dents/cm - round that to 10/cm - would mean a cotton 16/2 with 30 or 40 ends per cm... The open parts have about 3 - 3,5 dents per cm; would make about 10 - 14 epcm, which is quite acceptable. Nominal sett would be 15/cm or 20/cm with three and four ends/dent respectively.

There was still lots of narrow white warp left, threaded to an 8-shaft point. I re-threaded about half to have two ends/heddle, then sleyed the 2/heddle as 2 working ends/dent; sleyed the other half with some with 3 ends/dent, some with 4/dent (which, nominally, is the same as the 2/heddle part).

The result was a very narrow warp, which I wove with a couple of left-over quills: a soft cotton 16/2, a harder 16/2 and some linen 16/1.

The result? I think that the 1/heddle, 3/dent and linen weft may be a good place to start. There will have to be a bigger sample woven and properly finished before a final yardage is woven, though.

25/02/2015

Daff completed, and handed in. (There is to be a big jubilee exhibition for Hemslöjden Kronoberg 100 years)

Hung as a curtain, to show how much light it lets trough (left), and as a room divider:

(The size? "It" (ie whatever one wanted to make) could not be more than max 160 cm. I suppose it can be called a "sample")

Here are some construction details. First, if there has to be a hem at the bottom, the layers have to be woven separately. I also chose to weave them simultaneously, to make them even at the bottom. Thus, the start sequence:

It could be done with only one pick at a time, but it is so much faster to weave two picks in each colour.

When the hems were long enough, I switched to the "body plan" (here shortened; I had 24 ends/picks per layer). I put in three "empties" between colours. The turquoise pick in the middle is to remind me to (and facilitate) pass the light green shuttle from top to bottom, to match the unwoven warp.

When I got to the upper end, I wanted to make a sleeve for the mounting dowel (provided by the organizers). Decided to end the middle, white, layer with a hem in the middle of the sleeve. This meant a white-hem-but-outer-layers-going-on (still shortened):

Which then gave way to the two just-green-with-empty-distances part:

Yes, I did not need to use 12 shafts, but from the beginning I had planned for a different enlacement of the "layers".
(I did weave the whole shebang "backwards", according to the software: "reverse direction)

The parting shot: daffodil with trimmed petals

(And nobody has commented on the hems... yet)

- maybe I should also add: 100% cotton, 24 ends/"column", also per inch, same in weft. Yarns used were mostly 16/2, but there were several both fatter and thinner, total of maybe 12 colours/nuances.

19/02/2015

Done: hemmed (but not showed to the hemming police, so it might still be rejected), put in mesh bag, put in washing machine.
Out of the machine.

Dare I open the bag? Deep breath, shake fingers to loosen them up, get the pins at the ready...

I pinned it from the bottom, for as far as I could get on the ironing board, pressing (but not really hard). Folded gently, pinned next section...
Got to the top, where there is (will be) a sleeve of sorts, for the mounting dowel.

There are two snowdrops and one daffodil, but I haven't yet tried to untangle the "petals".

10/02/2015

On my other blog I have a label for the first snowdrop. I haven't had that label for more than 4 years, but it sure seems as if they start earlier and earlier...

"The first daffodil" (which may come to be the title of what is on the loom):

(but I plan to have one complete with petals a little higher up)

And the mystery:
I have noticed that hand-throwing shuttles on the AVL makes me tired much faster than on weaving on the old CM.
Today it dawned on me: the shuttle race is in the way!
On the CM I can hold the beater away with the thumb of the catch-hand, and put the hand with the palm under the shed opening. This way the shuttle flows right into the hand - but with a shuttle race, I have to catch the shuttle as it comes along the "shelf".
Also, the AVL beater is heavier than the other, so the thumb has to stay in its "holding-away" position a tad longer. So to catch the shuttle, I have to do the actual catch with the fore-finger on top, which in the next instant means I have to shift the grip on the shuttle to be able to throw it into the next shed...

(I tried to get a pic of this, but would have needed an extra hand for the camera)

08/02/2015

... and some commentary, now on my website: here for English, here for Swedish.

If you see something wrong, or disagree with me, please send an e-mail (link on the page)

I have also some older texts for download (they are all on the page, but in the middle of the text) - collected here (English version, but there is a "button" at the upper left for toggling between languages. In fact, the button is there, same position, on all my web pages.)

To give this post some physical weaving content, here is a sample:

The warp is on the loom, the serial-to-usb works even for weaving proper, but the structure will be changed some.
Maybe the result will be called "the first daffodil".

(Sample above is hemmed but not wet finished. Once I saw the hemming idea worked, I was just interested in the float lengths vs how I think it will survive the "muggle" handling. Decided shorter are better.)

31/01/2015

(or, at least: this is how I learned it, when I was at weaving school)

Let’s start with an ordinary 2/2 twill: comparing the two faces, we see that the twill line goes in opposite directions.

Thus, if we just take the whole piece as is, and turn under, the reverse side with the hem at the bottom would look like this:

If, instead, we weave the hem part “opposite”, what we see on loom would be this:

And, with the hem turned, the reverse side has the twill line going the same way all over:

Going on to a 2-block twill – if the right side looks like this

the reverse looks like this

and therefore the hem part should be woven like this

Note the clean cut(s) between the hem part and the body. It is of no structural importance, but it looks much neater.

And, in parts of the world where the weaving police is active, it is a must!

In those parts, it is also of vital importance that the pattern on the 2-block hem is "correct" - and also that there are exactly the same number of picks on the two hems (of one hemmed piece - or, if one is presenting a stack of towels, for instance, the same # on all the hems).

How do I know? Because I was rejected from a (Hemslöjden) exhibition because there were not the same # of picks. The hems
measured the same, and the pattern matched, but that was less important...
(And no, the primary cause was not my uneven beating - I had used a relatively fat and uneven tow yarn... had I woven one more repeat it would perhaps have evened out. Or not)

Do I always plan/sew hems this way? No, and I even sew my hems with a machine. (Unless they are meant for a Hemslöjden exhibitions, of course.)

The same reasoning can be applied to other bindings (structures) as well.

Here is part of a profile draft for "cat tracks", with the hem at the top: